Kinnettles Tea Garden, Angus
@teagardensofscotland
@kinnettlesgold
We welcome visitors ONLY by prior appointment.
Kinnettles Tea Garden Tour costs and information
About Kinnettles
Welcome to Kinnettles Tea Garden. We are located in the Strathmore Valley on the North East Coast of Scotland in Angus and have been growing tea since 2007. We sold our first commercial crop of our handmade Kinnettles Gold in 2015 to Pekoe Tea in Edinburgh. Along with growing and making our own tea we also have a horticultural business that supplies tea plants grown from specially selected cold tolerant seed brought in from Ilam District in Nepal.
Kinnettles Tea Garden is part of our arable farming business Walker-Munro Farms. Tea was seen as a means of diversification for our farm into a high end crop when we first started this adventure, little appreciating what a full time all encompassing passion it would become!
Our Tea Garden:
We are spread out over a couple of acres around our farmhouse with tea plants under polytunnels from which we pluck our Kinnettles Gold, then 4000 tea plants (an acre) are outside in our beautiful walled garden. These have been grown from seed which we imported from Nepal in 2016. We also have half an acre (2000) of ex soviet Georgian tea bushes ready for plucking in 2022. In the middle of this is our small micro processing room for producing our Kinnettles Gold Tea.
Our Tea production:
In 2007 when we first started and up until 2015 it was impossible to get tea seed on a commercial scale, so we grew our tea from cuttings from tea plants in Cornwall. These struggled outside in the field (due to their shallow root system) so we took the decision to use polytunnels for protection. We pluck these plants grown from cuttings throughout April to September thanks to the season extension provided by the tunnels. We repay the plant for giving us beautiful leaf, with applications of liquid manures made from comfrey, nettles and docks which are all growing in the immediate vicinity around us. Our farm philosophy is one of regenerative agriculture, and conservation farming which is different from organic. We are not registered as organic, however our tea is grown totally organically.
Our walled garden is now in production and the majority of our leaf goes to our contribution to Tea Gardens of Scotland's tea ‘(soon to be launched). The rest of the leaf is kept for our tea learning here at Kinnettles, tea tastings with tour groups and experimentation.
Our tea processing:
We have a micro processing room where we hand roll our Kinnettles Gold and use techniques relevant to Scotland rather than mimic a tea process from any other part of the world. We are also experimenting with making another tea from our leaf grown from seed and are trialing small micro equipment to assist with pressure on the leaf when rolling so the adventure and journey continues!
Our Horticultural tea plant business:
Back in 2016 a wealth of experience was garnered when TGS came together and imported seed from Nepal and ex Soviet Georgia. This seed was grown in glasshouses by Walker-Munro Farms with a collective push by the TGS group to help so we could populate all our tea gardens with tea plants. This gave us experience in growing tea in Scotlands complex climate.
This year 2020 Kinnettles Tea Garden has gone back to growing tea plants and we have two tea growing projects at locations near our farm, nurturing seedlings for sale to the public, nursery and other outlets which are available from April, fully hardened off and ready raring to go to be planted outside.
Kinnettles Tea Tour
We warmly welcome you to visit our tea garden in Angus, located in a beautiful setting on our working family farm approximately 10 miles north of Dundee.
The cost of a tour is £45 (incl vat) per head and the minimum tour size is 4 people. Our tour will take 2 hours and you will have the chance to see our tea, be shown how to pluck, see how the tea is rolled and learn about our Tea Gardens of Scotland project. There is also a tea tasting
Follow our journey on instagram @kinnettlesgold
